Maia Smith | Graduation Year: 2025

• Executed: 3rd Year
• Degree Path: Interior Architecture
• Course: IARC Design Studio III
• Location: Manhattan, KS

Inspired by the warm, cozy memory of baking cookies with Grandma at Christmas time, Hearth: a memory cafe, is intended to encourage users to cherish and recognize the beauty of their own memories. Following the client’s mission of bringing awareness to memory loss diseases, Hearth illustrates the importance and impact memories have by creating an environment that invokes nostalgia and feelings reminiscent of the memory that inspired it.

Using protective mass forms, embracing arches, and warm colors and materials, a sense of safety and coziness is created. Representing the concept physically is the custom fireplace that provides conceptual, visual, and experiential continuity between floors. Additionally, the “sanctuary” booths provide a private, intimate experience that both meets the user’s need for personal space and the conceptual ideas of coziness and protection.

Hearth is the physical embodiment of a warm hug from Grandma. Here, old memories can be revisited and new ones can be made.